Our almost-18-year-old son has seen every episode of “The Office” and “Parks & Recreation.” While I haven’t watched either show with any sort of faithfulness, one film that I’ve personally learned a thing or two from is “A Clockwork Orange.” Suffice it to say, our son has had his eyes propped open seen all the available episodes of this Web series and exhibits the appropriate Pavlovian response now to the dental version of this sort of comedy.

Welcome to Episode 1 of Word of Mouth: Hiring a Practice Management Consultant

You have seven minutes to watch an episode, right? Sure, the writers aren’t blazing new comedy contrails, but the acting is decent and the shticks, while predictable, are even funny. Come on, it’s dental humor – there’s not too much of it around so take what you can get.

If you read Dentaltown Magazine, you may have received the edited, paper version of this article today in your snail mail box. But because I don’t have to make room for saliva ejector advertisements in the sidebar (seriously, this article helps sell SALIVA EJECTORS!) you can enjoy the original here in its more raw form.

A hygienist’s answer to “What do you do?”

by Trish Walraven RDH, BS

You’re at a gathering of acquaintances, a general hob-nobbery of casual conversing, one of those social obligations that you love/hate because you’re really more of an outgoing introvert, someone who plays well with others but enjoys their quiet, navel-gazing world too. Sooner or later you know that the question will be asked.

“So, what do you do?”

No hesitation here. You know what your profession is. You have a title, a position, a calling.

Then that inner part of your thinking begins to twitch.

You weren’t asked about your job title, actually. You were asked a direct question: What do you do?

The typical reaction of hearing that you’re a dentist or hygienist involves a full disregard of the art and compassion that you put into your profession. People want to tell you about their bad experiences as a child, or how much they hate you (but don’t take it personally!). They just nod, warily, quietly, at your response and quickly think of a way to change the subject.

Instead of giving away the conversation and letting it slide into other people’s thought bubbles, then, you can steer the dialogue back to the original question, and the feel-good answer you’ve prepared instead.

“I take care of people’s teeth.”

You’re a regular Mother Theresa now, aren’t you? The way you dedicate your life’s work to helping others, it’s so freaking noble. This response elicits a smile of comfort and familiarity from your obligatory small-talk partner. The conversation can move forward now that your profession has been deemed socially acceptable.

An hour later, driving home, you’re blissfully alone with your thoughts, rewinding your earlier social interactivity, musing over the highlights, and you really, deeply, ask yourself in hindsight, “what do I do?”

I can’t speak for dentists, but if you’re a dental hygienist, you do some pretty strange things, actually.

First of all, perfection to you is wave-shaped. It’s the curve of a thin scallop of attached pinkness that anoints each interproximal space with a coral-tipped point of the healthiest gingiva imaginable. Anything less than this in your patients’ mouths is limbo. Chaos is the reason your job exists, but you always hunger for order and balance. To achieve this imagined perfection in a mouth that is not optimal, then, means that you often resort to some diversions along the way. It’s about the journey, not the destination, right?

How do you handle the patient whose lower anterior linguals are piled with a couple of grams of Grade A calcium phosphate? Sure, you could just chunk the calculus off. But sometimes, when you’re feeling a little dastardly, you carve out the top and the bottom of the tartar evenly, so that you’ve left a neat chalky white mustache, complete with curlicues. With artistic satisfaction, you turn your attention back to your duty and politely erase the Banksy-esque dental graffiti from your patient’s teeth.

This is not something you tell people that you do.

You also tell no one that your deepest fear is running into anything artificial while you’re cleaning someone’s teeth. Your ultrasonic scaler turns into a fierce lead pencil in those situations, which means not only that you are wearing down your precious metal antennae into useless nubs, but also that you’re leaving dark lines where there was once only whiteness. Every last bit of old orthodontic cement has now been revealed like a charcoal rubbing, thanks to you. And you would never admit to leaving a grey streak on a brand new porcelain crown. How could you slip like that? You hope like heck that the prophy paste will get that scary line off before anyone notices.

When it comes to things that you enjoy, then, there’s a bit of hesitation about sharing those stories as well. Like hovering around the periapical abcess that’s begging to be relieved? Or when you’re spraying baking soda slurry under a bridge and the patient becomes aware that its odor speaks more than the thousand words that you could ever say about superfloss? To you the stink is like scoring a point. Or why your trophy at the end of a particularly difficult appointment is a 2×2 gauze loaded with something that looks like buckshot, but is really your patient’s carefully extracted calculus? Fun times.

Probably the most difficult part of your career, though, has to do with patient management. Unless you’re regularly disengaging people from their mouths via nitrous oxide, there are forceful tongues, and lip pulls, and saliva ropes, and people who forget that it’s safe to swallow their own spit. Suck. Suck. Suck. Ten times a minute. At least this way they’re remembering to breathe. When they forget to breathe they feel like they are drowning. It’s not the water; they’re just suffocating because you’re blocking any chance of mouth breathing. Never mind that noses are much more optimal for breathing but whatever. Not everyone has learned how to snorkel either. And how do you convince patients that unless they just ate a handful of almonds, brushing immediately before their dental appointment won’t make your task any easier?

Then there are the patients themselves. Not just their mouths, but the whole person. Patients whose embarrassment about their teeth are the reason they haven’t been to a dentist in a while. People who not only open their mouths but open up to you, tell you their secrets, their fears, their wishes and hopes. People who trust you to take care of them, to love them, to nurture them towards health. They see something special in your eyes, and they open wide.

So go ahead and make it known out there in the big world that you’re hygienist. Or a dentist. You scale teeth. You drill teeth. No biggie. That’s what you do.

What really matters, though, are the reasons why.

Trish Walraven RDH, BSDH is a mom and practicing dental hygienist in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. She is a bit of an an introvert when she’s writing dental articles, but you get her together with her best friend from high school and Irish festival beer and she begins to make faces like this. She also makes faces like this under her mask if her patients aren’t paying attention to her flossing instructions.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that being a dental hygienist is easy compared to comedy. Every time I imagine that I’ve got the spotlight, that it’s just me and a microphone, and I’m telling dumb jokes about cleaning teeth, I get this intense knot in my stomach that makes me realize it’s really not my calling. Ask me to write something funny; well, I have days to think about it, time to play with the words, rewrite them when they’re not working right. But delivery? Only to your screen, kid. Punchlines, storytelling, pacing, all that in real time? It’s a surefire way to see me transform into Space-Out Girl, whose super power is to make everyone feel extremely sorry for how badly it’s going onstage so that the audience members turn to each other in embarrassment, averting their gaze just long enough for her to slink back into a fetal position behind the curtain.

So it is with extreme admiration that I present to you these comedic clips about going to the dentist. Some are classics, some are rising comedians that have less than 100 views on their YouTube videos. But I think all of them are worthy of being here in their own way.

Never leave a comic in a room with a little sucky thingie.

Totally funny. No, it’s not Jamie Foxx, but even his dentist thinks he might be. This is what happens when he’s left alone with a saliva ejector.

Guessing your flossing habits is a power trip for dentists.

Mildly amusing, but it misses the whole “of course you’re not flossing, your gums look like raw meat” point of it and goes straight to “your dentist is an a-hole.”

The dentist has a case of tongue-us.

You’ll definitely smile about this one, and probably lick the back of your forearm, let it dry, and then smell it to see if maybe you’re doing this to your patients. I like the way he gets all educational at the end.

Seinfeld vs. Walter White

Probably my favorite laugh-out-loud clip, proof that classics just get better with time. While this isn’t a comedy routine per se, Jerry Seinfeld did start as a stand-up comedian. Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston is a dentist to Seinfeld’s Anti-Dentite. This Seinfeld episode mashup is little longer than the other clips but totally worth your time.

She had to use Yelp to find a dental referral.

Skip the intro to about 1:20 and watch as this open mike diva talks about her latest visit to the dentist. She says her husband finds that going to the dentist relaxes him. That’s not so much the case for Gisele Gerry. She’s a talent, though, as she takes us through her flossing discoveries and complains about the hygienist with judgmental eyes.

Robin Williams and the lead apron joke.

If you don’t mind a few F-bombs you’ll enjoy the first minute of this clip where Robin discusses anthrax, Congress, and gonads at the dental office.

Robin Williams before he was famous, under an extracted tooth sign.

I had to add one more of him, from a terrible film made in 1977. The joke is lame and doesn’t quite make sense, but the slide whistle saves the day. Plus, hey, it’s Robin Williams in suspenders, which makes me sad and happy all at the same time.

Mybuh libip ibis obon thebuh fluhboor.

The most classic of classics in dental humor. Bill Cosby explains what he’s like at the dentist like only he can do. And if it’s been a while since you’ve seen this clip, it might be time for a refresher. Just make sure you wipe up your slobber afterwards.

______

Knowing how Google can be so literal sometimes (!), you might have come to this post to figure out how to do dentistry standing up and are now pretty PO’ed that all you got was a bunch of stand-up comedy videos instead. Hey, I’ve done the Crazy Bendy Straw routine with my back all spazzing out in the stand up position, and while it hurt like a lover clucker, we should all be thankful that wasn’t you, me, and a microphone. I might have just shoved that in your cheek for a laugh.
Badumm ching.

Aaand…Slide whistle out.

A blogger since 1997, Trish Walraven, RDH, BSDH is a practicing dental hygienist and marketing manager for an indie dental software development company. She likes writing about herself in third person and wasting time watching videos online because she can excuse it as “researching for a post on DentalBuzz.”

DentiSign is a sign-language system designed to help patients deal with the loss of control they may feel when they can’t verbalize their concerns and fears. If you’re a sympathetic dental professional who values the trust in a dentist-patient relationship, feel free to click over to the original DentiSign website and share these hand signals with your patients, because gosh darn it, you care.

On the other hand, if you prefer to GET REAL, have no soul, a thick skin, or just have a sense of humor, you may enjoy this updated, DentalBuzz-ified version of DentiSign instead:

Problem is that it looks like Captain Obvious put the DentiSign Inc. company out of business a few years ago so you can’t order any products from them. But the website lives on, so go visit, in case you’re so inclined.

Or at least come up with some better signals than I did.

Share your sign language ideas by adding a Comment; the best will make it into the Best Hand Gestures of DentiSigns to be shared here at DentalBuzz.

It’s getting closer to 2014 and you can pretty much guess what that means: the Obamacarepocalypse is almost upon us. Yee Haw. Preppers convinced that TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) is imminent will be pleased that they will no longer need to add a dentist to their list of People We Would Like To Have With Us when it all hits the fan.

What can you add to your hoard instead of another mouth to feed? A home dental kit, of course! The DentiDrill comes complete with a handpiece, a curing light, a wee bit of composite, a vial of topical lidocaine, a lithium-ion battery charger, 1 tungsten steel drill head, a silicon polisher, a stainless steel dentist mirror, and the DVD tutorial.

You’d better pre-order soon, though. As soon as the FDA and other authorities get wind of this there will be an immediate shutdown of all shipments. You know how good our government is at shutdowns. Product is supposed to begin its journey to the US tomorrow if it all goes as planned, however.

Currently the DentiDrill is being marketed to moms who feel that their options are otherwise limited when it comes to taking care of their children’s teeth. Does a mother have the legal right to practice dentistry on her kids without a license? After the apocalypse comes, who cares about licenses? See, the marketers have got it ALL WRONG! You’re not scaring people away from managed healthcare, you’re inviting chaos and STUPID FEAR! I say bring it, if that’s what you want. This is only clever and useful if you’re desperate, and in the United States, trust me, we are not. At least not yet.

Curious to learn more? You’ll just have to see this video to believe it.

Still don’t believe it’s real? Just look! There’s More! DentiDrill has a Facebook page here that details design and production going back a year or so. It certainly doesn’t seem too fishy.

If you’re ready to drop $275 for one or are just trying to figure this thing out, visit DentiDrill.com and get one step closer to feeling like you’re doing the right thing for yourself and your family.

As far as me and how far I’ll go to prep for the end of civilization? I’ll probably just learn how to take out teeth. Much more practical skill, no batteries needed, just a strong stomach and hey, maybe a couple of swigs from that bottle that you were counting on your drinking buddy to bring.

Interesting Note: The DentiDrill website domain owner shares the same address as the Kentucky Dental Association. Thanks to Dr. Shad Lewis at DentalTown for this wonderful bit of sleuthing.The American Dental Association says that the KDA denies the address connection in this announcement published October 25.

Sponsors

About

DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

Email Subscription

Still in the sidebar, huh? You must be really bored. Or a fan, which is awesome! Please fill out the form below to know whenever DentalBuzz is updated. We'll send out new posts as they happen, directly to your mailbox.

Article Archives

Article Archives

Contact Us

Guest columnists are welcome to submit edgy stories that cover new ground (no regurgitations, please!) , or if there's a topic that you'd like to see explored please punch in your best stuff here and see if it ends up sticking to the website.